Organizational and individual determinants of patent production of academic scientists and engineers in the United States

Abstract

This article contributes to an important literature on the determinants of academic patenting. We develop and test a model that predicts how individual characteristics and organizational factors affect individual patenting production. The analysis uses zero-inflated negative binomial regression on data from a 2010 national survey of 1,379 US-based university scientists and engineers, 624 of which hold no patents assigned to their current university. Findings from this research generally support our hypotheses that individual and organizational factors are associated with individual patent production. We find that while university patent policy and university technology transfer offices may be important for encouraging or discouraging scientists to patent the first time, department incentives and individual preferences and characteristics predict the number of patents that faculty produce. This research supports prior literature and develops new perspectives on how universities and policy-makers can understand and shape how individual and organizational constraints and incentives affect patent productivity.

Research Funding Mechanisms and Biomedical Research Outputs

“…Ó 2016 The Economic Society of Australia as the strategy and resources of the laboratory. This is consistent with other research that finds that individual preferences and characteristics are an important predictor of the number of patent applications that faculty produce (Huang et al, 2011). Notes: Standard errors in parentheses, ***P < 0.01, **P < 0.05, *P < 0.1.…”

“…These individual effects assume all other things are held constant, such as the strategy and resources of the laboratory. This is consistent with other research that finds that individual preferences and characteristics are an important predictor of the number of patent applications that faculty produce (Huang et al ., ).…”

Realized Publicness at Public and Private Research Universities

“…In the case of RI universities, one might describe cultural cognitive public value institutions as efforts to increase service to undergraduates, commitments to diversity, and beliefs that the organization’s values can shape public outcomes. For example, faculty perceptions of shifting university priorities toward commercialization and department incentives to patent may affect faculty commitments to traditional university activities such as publishing and teaching and shift faculty outcomes (Bozeman 2000; Huang, Feeney, Welch 2011). Faculty also may respond to private market demands and university commitments to increase university–industry partnerships, at the expense of the production of public goods (Slaughter and Leslie 1997).…”

Current Trends in Science and Technology Policy Research: An Examination of Published Works from 2010–2012

“…First, several studies are pointing to institutional factors that encourage patenting. For example, Huan and colleagues () utilized a national survey of university scientists and engineers and found that both individual and organizational factors were correlated with individual patent production. Primarily, they found that universities that provided departments financial incentives were associated with higher quantities of patenting.…”